>>>It sure looks like one of the subsequent installs clobbered a 'working' component with one of "lesser effectiveness", but I have no way to get the system to use components from the original WIN98 CD-ROM!@#@!
>>>
>>>Can anyone suggest some course of action to resolve this??
>>>
>>>Thanks in advance,
>>>
>>>Jim N
>>
>>
>>I'd pull the network cables out, put in cards that use 10 base T (RJ 45 connectors) and a small 4-8 port hub. I'd be willing to bet the coax is what's causing the problem. It's also a 2mb transfer vs. 10 mb on the 10 base -T.
>
>Absolutely incorrect. 10Base2 (Thin Ethernet) uses a signalling rate of 20MHz, for a data rate of 10Mbps; the same as 10BaseT. Even old-style ARCNet achieved better than 2Mbops 9ArcNet was 2.5Mbps by default.) There are advantages to 10BaseT, but raw speed in a small environment without routing and switching is not one of them.
>
>CAT5 cable can support 100Mbps operation with NICs and a hub that support 100Mbps operation; ThinNet is limited to 10Mbps operation.
>

I sit corrected on the 10 base 2, when I was using Arcnet years ago the effective throughput was around 2 mb, and that's when I went to 10baseT. For home use, I doubt that he'll need 100 mb, but the cost on the nics and hubs has come way down and the quality of the low end stuff has come way up.

As to the rest of my comments about reducing the number of protocols to 1, I stand by that statement as absolutely correct!<g>

John